the Cake

I've been sitting on this post for a week now. It is the Cake post. I made this for our dinner party with Laura and Tony to celebrate the fourth of July and my little bro's birthday--but secretly it was for me a little bit too, because I knew I would be too lazy to bake myself a cake.

The Cake. The four layers of heaven that almost killed me. Saveur calls it the "Heaven and Hell cake," and this is not far from the truth. Devil's food, angel food. Fluffy cake, dense ganache. Heaven to eat, hell to digest.

The Cake, in its birthday suit

This Cake is a monster. It is without question a temperamental, supremely decadent, Paris Hilton of a cake--but so much fatter and so, so delicious.

Find the recipe here. Bake if you dare: It is so worth it. And I had the last piece for breakfast on my birthday! That is the breakfast of champions. Or it would have been, with a tall mimosa to wash it down with. (Fresca is just not the same.)

I did make one change to the recipe. Instead of the peanut butter mousse, at my brother's request I made a chocolate cream cheese frosting for the filling. Everything else was pretty much the same as the Saveur recipe, although I used 8" cake rounds rather than the larger version the magazine recommends. I fit all the devil's food into one round, but there was just so much fluffy angel food batter that I ended up with two healthy sized angel food cakes. I could have made six layers but I didn't feel motivated to slice unnecessarily, so the angel food layers were extra thick. I would actually do it like that again, because every other layer was unbelievably rich and dense.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 oz Neufchatel or Cream Cheese (room temp.)
• 1/2 sitck sweet cream butter (softened)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 + cups confectioner's sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)

Beat cream cheese, butter, and vanilla until smooth and fluffy. Add sugar, one cup at a time, until desired consistency is reached. I wanted it to be thick so that it would stand up to the ganache coating and the rich cakes. Finally, add cocoa powder by tablespoons until desired chocolatiness is reached. This is prime sampling opportunity.

Brown Sugar Cupcakes

Inspired by this post from Ezra Pound Cake (originally Martha Stewart), and having just been turned down for an internship, I decided to put off my job interviews and make something delicious. This will also be my first time baking cupcakes (I KNOW!) and I'm not great at frosting, so this will be an adventure.

The batter was a lot thicker than I was expecting it to be. I really had no idea what it would be like, so I'm not sure if that's this recipe or all cupcake batters. I ended up spooning it into the paper cups; it stayed light and fluffy until I popped them in the oven. 

I ruined one when I pulled it out the oven {{klutz}} but I thought, "Frosting should cover it..."

For frosting I used my mom's classic cream cheese recipe, plus a little brown sugar. This recipe is so easy I've been making it since I was five or six years old. In middle school I brought it to class for us to eat with spoons--it's that good. However I was little iffy on the details of the recipe and did the following:

8 oz Neufchatel cream cheese (low fat Philadelphia)

1 cup butter

1 tsp vanilla

pinch of salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tbs milk

and 1 box powdered sugar.

Not enough powdered sugar! I would probably double it next time. As you can see, the frosting is more than a little droopy. (Also, this is one of the bad ones. All the good looking cupcakes disappeared before I had a chance to take pictures.) I also like the frosting to be a little more cream-cheesy, less buttery, but that's just personal preference.

All in all, I was happy but not elated about the final product. The cakes and the frosting were both a little too sweet for me, and the cakes were a little dry. Of course, my family loved them.